Thursday, August 31, 2017

Please say hello to our Guest Designer for the current challenge, A Little Rusty. Donna Billek from Inkysplatters was the top pick from the 'Christmas in July' challenge. Donna is a loyal supporter of Frilly and Funkie and it is always nice to see her fabulous creations.

I am very happy to usher in Autumn with my guest designer spot on the Frilly & Funkie blog. Thank you to everyone who visited my blog to see my Christmas ornament project and thank you to the design team for choosing me! For this challenge, Autumn, our lovely challenge host, asked us to go A Little Rusty! The challenge was to use rust or to focus on the beautiful colors we see during Autumn. Thank you to Linda for supporting the challenge – it’s always great fun to play along.

While I’ve always been a bit crafty, my entry into the world of distress inks and mixed media has only been within the past couple of years. I live with my handsome husband, our clowder, and a pup in Colorado close to the beautiful Rocky Mountains. Around here Autumn tends to go by rather quickly! We just moved to a new house so between the rust paste, the rusty techniques, and my rustiness I set off to create my first big project in my new craft room (where I still can’t find anything and stuff still hasn’t been completely put away yet….).

Autumn is a lovely time of year and my favorite time of year! It makes me think of all of the rich colors of the season and when I can put away my summer shorts and skirts and go for the more comfy or stylish clothes like leggings, one of my scarfs, and my leather jacket. So for this project I created a hat that is an ode to Autumn with just a hint of Halloween. I had fun creating the hat from scratch and then adding, creating, or distressing all of the bits and bobs for the hat. I love working with the rust paste from Finnabair – it’s just a whole lot of fun! To add a bit of shimmer to it I brushed it with a Wink of Stella Clear Shimmer pen. I hope it inspires you to create something rusty, autumnal, or both!

Here is a close-up view of my hat.

* * *

Pop on over to Donna's blog and check out the details on her fun hat and then come on back and share your creation for our 'A Little Rusty' challenge. You have lots of time because it runs until 11:55 pm EST on September 12th and can be found HERE.

Wednesday, August 23, 2017

Hi! Suzz here. Welcome to the current Frilly and Funkie challenge 'On the Cutting Edge'. I recently acquired some beautiful new dies and I thought it might be time to bring them out and show them off. This challenge is all about using your dies, punches or other cutting tools to create a masterpiece featuring at least one die cut, machine cut or punched image. Make sure your art is in the vintage or shabby chic style and incorporates a cut out.

The team will choose their top four picks with the winner being invited to join us in a Guest DT spot here at Frilly and Funkie and the next three will receive badges to display on their blogs. Everyone who enters and follows the rules will be entered into the draw to have the chance to win a $25 spending spree at The Funkie Junkie Boutique.

The guidelines for entering are simple; create a new vintage or shabby chic project following the challenge theme, link it below to your post
(not just your blog) and also include a link back to this challenge in your post. You can combine our challenge with up to 10 challenges (including this one) to be in with a chance of winning. If you are entering through a public forum (such as Instagram) you'll need to include the words Frilly and Funkie Challenge. Also, please be sure to turn off your Word Verification so our Design Team can leave
comments on your blogs. Make sure you follow these rules as unfortunately we have had to eliminate entrants from the prize draws in the past.

Are you feeling inspired? I know I am! Come join in on the fun! You have until Tuesday, August 15th to play along with us. We can't wait to see what you make! Don't forget to come back tomorrow to see what our latest Guest Designer has created and then in one week for more inspiration from the Funkie side of the Design Team.
Suzz

Monday, August 21, 2017

Welcome everyone, it's time again to announce our latest Frilly and Funkie winners. Thank you so much to everyone who took the time to enter our 'Read Any Good Books Lately?' challenge. We really were blessed with the standard of entries for this one from you all and it was a very close run thing when the DT voted for their favourites.

This time we've chosen #12 Niki (Pawsitively Creative) as our overall winner. The patina and sculpting of the octopus on this hat blew us away! Congratulations to Niki on being our favourite for the 'Read Any Good Books Lately?' challenge and winning the opportunity to be a Guest Designer here at Frilly and Funkie for a future challenge. Please email Cec at cwcardcreations@rogers.com for your badge and Guest Designer details.

And now for the three winners of our Frilly and Funkie Top 3 Badges; the choices are... #4 JulD #6 Maggi Harding and #13 Coco!!! Please email Linda at thefunkiejunkie@gmail.com for the codes for the Top 3 badges so that you can display them proudly on your blog.

A big thanks from the Frilly and Funkie team to everyone who took part in this challenge and congratulations again to our winners. Our current challenge, 'On The Cutting Edge' runs through Tuesday, August 29th. We hope to see you entering this time around so that you too can be in with a chance to win. And don't forget to check out the inspiration from the Funkie side of the Design Team which will be shared this coming Wednesday, August 23rd.

Friday, August 18, 2017

Hi Friends and visitors! It's Sara Emily here to welcome you to this week's Friday Focus where we share ideas, tips and techniques on one specific product or range of products currently available at The Funkie Junkie Boutique. For the next two weeks, Prima's Art Alchemy paints will be discounted an additional 15% off Linda's already discounted prices. With this extra savings, you have every reason to sample these amazing paints from Prima's Opal Magic, Metallique, Sparks and Impasto lines!

I love working with these creamy, dreamy paints! They have amazingly rich color and one coat coverage on so many surfaces. I couldn't stop at just one project. I have prepared three very different projects using paints from Prima's Metallique, Sparks and Impasto lines to give you an idea of just how versatile they are and how well they work with other products you might have on hand. Whether you're a card maker, a scrapbook, or mixed media artist or (if you're like me) you just love to try a variety of arts and crafts, you'll want to include at least a few of these paints in your stash. They're great for home decor projects as well.

Let's start with a grungy Halloween card.

I started with the background which was my inspiration springboard for the rest of the card. I painted 110# card stock with Sparks Raven's Eye and randomly blended over it with Ground Espresso Distress paint and Walnut Stain Distress Crayon using my finger. I embossed the painted card with an old Tim's Holtz Texture Fade. (Frilly and Funkie now carries Tim's Cobwebs embossing folder.) I sanded the raised portion back to the card and blended on some Walnut Stain Distress ink to further distress it.

The skull is from Tim's Undertaker stamp set. For the hat, I painted black card with Metallique Midnight Sky , allowed to dry, (These paints dry very quickly.) and stamped the hat image with Archival Jet Black ink. I fussy cut it and dry brushed with Sparks Fairy Wings. The skull is inked in Walnut Stain DOX and stamped on a scrap of DOX mop up paper (Peeled Paint and Walnut Stain) I fussy cut it and mounted both the skull and hat on cardboard.

I made some 'slime' which is a mixture of soft gel medium, Mushroom alcohol ink and Fairy Wings. I smeared it on the skull and in the eye sockets and blasted it with my heat tool. This causes it to bubble nicely and looks perfectly disgusting.

I made a frame using a die cut given to me by my good friend and teammate, Autumn (SewPaperPaint). I traced around it and cut a second shape from black card. I painted the die cut with gesso and added stenciling with Snow White Impasto paint and crackle texture paste. The Impasto paint is so thick, it makes a real smooth raised image with the stencil. It's super easy to apply; you can squeeze out just the right amount onto your palette knife and spread over your stencil. Once dry, I sprayed with Black Marble Dylusions ink spray and water and blended the edges with Ground Espresso Distress ink. You get very interesting pooling of color with sprays and inks over the Impasto paint. I backed this with the black panel and added some Remnant Rubs.

I assembled the layers, adding a scrap of dyed cheesecloth from last year's Halloween decorations. The spider web panel was backed with a piece of lightweight black paper on which I smeared Crazing medium and distress crayons to highlight the texture. Doesn't it look like old charred paper? My simple sentiment is a portion of 'Ghostly Greetings', a Seasonal Small Talk sticker.

Next up: a mixed media canvas.

I've also used Prima's Impasto, Metallique and Sparks paints on my mixed media canvas. I began by adhering tissue paper with collage medium. Next, I added stenciling with Impasto paint and Stars and Dot Fade stencils. I also applied Impasto randomly on the canvas for more texture. I stenciled stars on tissue paper with crackle paste. When dry, I tore around the edges of the stars and adhered them to canvas with collage medium. An easy way to do this is to wet a paint brush with water and brush where you wish to tear the tissue.

I adhered star confetti with collage medium and dried. Then just spray with Dylusions London Blue ink spray and water to allow color to bleed and pool. Dry and dab black confetti stars with Metallique Light Patina paint. I did some heat embossing with script from Tim Holtz Urban Grunge set and white embossing powder. With my finger I applied Sparks Magical Pond and Mermaid Sparkle and Metallique Midnight Sky lightly to highlight the texture.

I love how these paints can make even paper look like metal! The two larger stars were cut from a manila file folder using Tim's Dimensional Stars die and embossed with embossing folders. I painted them with Midnight Sky and allowed to dry. You don't need to prep your surfaces with gesso to get this great one coat coverage! I highlighted the texture with Fairy Wings, then waffled and went over that with Mermaid Sparkle. The smaller star is one of Tim's Adornment Stars painted with Midnight Sky and highlighted just with Mermaid Sparkle. It's hard to tell that two of these are not real metal!

A Clippings Sticker given a smudge of more Mermaid Sparkle was adhered with collage medium to be sure it stuck to this textured surface. To finish, I gave the canvas a splatter of watered down white acrylic paint. A very easy project with lots of great texture accentuated by Prima's dazzling Sparks paints. I wished I owned every color!

How about a super simple card with lot's of sparkle?

Talk about easy! The wooden butterfly from my stash was simply painted directly with Fairy Wings--again no prep work and great one-coat coverage! I had the crinoline butterfly left over from a previous project, and I just dabbed on a bit of Fairy Wings and Magical Pond paints and gave them a spritz of water. The crinoline is easy to shape as you dry it with your heat tool. I had the doily die cut in my stash. It didn't cut right because I needed to replace my plates, but I held onto it. I simply pressed it into my Versamark pad and heat embossed with white embossing powder. Finally I dipped it into a puddle of Broken China DOX and heat dried. What's left of the color bakes right in.

The simple background is made with Fossilized Amber, Broken China and Cracked Pistachio DOX and a splatter of watered down Fairy Wings. I love how the color separates when you add water, and then gives a halo effect when it dries on the paper.

Lastly, I chose an appropriate Clippings sticker, mounted it on chipboard. I edged it with Fairy Wings and adhered it. Very easy project that packs a lot of punch, thanks to these shimmery paints!

Since preparing this post, I've used some of these lovely paints on yet another mixed media layout which can be viewed on my blog. And next Wednesday, right here at Frilly and Funkie, I'll have another project using these paints.

I hope you're inspired to give Prima's Art Alchemy paints a try. Remember the extra 15% discount will be applied through August 31 at The Funkie Junkie Boutique. Do check out the shop to see the huge supply of yummy colors Linda has in stock. Thank you for hanging in there for my crazy long post! Happy creating! Hugs! Sara Emily